From: Taner Edis
Subject: Re: Gender and mythology
Message-ID: <9209270218.AA02633@lll-winken.llnl.gov>
Date: Sat, 26 Sep 1992 22:16:24 EDT
[Amy Bix writing]
Robert Sheaffer has requested a clarification of my argument that a
significant part of the "men's movement" is based on inaccurate
history. The faults I see in the mythopoetic men's movement thinking
are as follows:
1. Robert Bly's book "Iron John" and all the other books and weekend
retreats which build on it are based essentially on Bly's assertion
that men today are characterized by a serious "lack of energy". In
"Iron John" he describes them as "life-preserving but not
life-giving". Bly offers no real evidence to support his contention
that men today lack energy or that they have been weakened in some
way, simply anecdotal notes and fairy tales. I found the whole book
based on very fuzzy principles - he never really gives a clear
definition of what he wants a man of energy to be, and this
non-specificity makes it actually very hard to argue against him. I
found his supposed distinction between "life-preserving" and
"life-giving" meaningless, since he never chose to explain the
difference. As a historian, if I were writing about this period, I'd
want some real proof that men today were weaker than they "should" be,
not just Bly's assertion.
2. Bly's view of the 1960s is narrow to the point of inaccuracy. He
blames the 1960s student takeovers of campus buildings on "the son's
fear that the absent father is evil." He blames the (still unproven)
softening of males on the attitudes of women in the 1960s who chanted
"Women say yes to men who say no." If my historical work consisted of
such ridiculous claims, I'd be laughed out of the department. The
history of the 1960s student unrest was far more complex than Bly
asserts, and not to be blamed entirely on men's relationships with
their fathers or with women.
3. Bly's view of earlier history is equally narrow and false. In
"Iron John" he writes, "The mythological and cultural historian
Georges Dumezil has given a great gift with his discovery and massive
documentation of the idea that the fertile earth of Indo-European
civilization is composed of three separate soil layers: the King, the
Warrior and the Farmer. These three threads make up the tapestry...
One-third of the visions the Indo-European race has ever had in the
near or far past amount to visions from the head of the warrior." As
the most obvious criticism, this last sentence makes it clear that Bly
defines "the Indo-European race" to signify only men. For him, women
are insignificant to the point of absence. It's hard to perform
accurate history while ignoring one-half of the population. What
about the parts of civilization created by the Queen, the Mother, the
Laborer - women's multiple contributions to civilization? For Bly,
they simply do not exist. Also, I find the division of population
into the king, warrior and farmer classes vastly oversimplified.
Which category do slaves, serfs and peasants fit into? Craftsmen and
tradesmen? Thieves and vagrants? Clergymen, monks and hermits? The
real world is a lot more complicated than Bly likes to make out.
4. Bly's whole notion of the "warrior" and "wild man" are very
disturbing. Even though he cloaks them in mythological fables, these
terms come with historical baggage which cannot just be discarded.
His writing is a mix of veiled historical references, mythological
visions and psychological nonsense which is very hard to sort out.
Bly's vision of the "warrior" echoes the old stories of King Arthur
and the knights of Camelot which we all loved as kids. But most of us
recognize as we grow older that such fairy tales are not anywhere
close to the truth. Bly presents the "warrior" as a man in service to
a transcendent cause, whose body and courage never fail him, who
always protects the weak and enhances civilization. To quote just a
little, "When a warrior is in service to a True King, he does well and
his body becomes a hardworking servant and an adult warrior inhabits
the body." History shows us that in fact, many wars are fought not
for a "transcendent cause" but for petty and irrational reasons.
"Warriors" have always suffered from physical and psychic failings
(see Paul Fussell's writings about how many men in war soil themselves
with fear, and naturally so.) Warriors do not always protect women
and children; it is at least as common for women and children to be
the victims of murder, rape, torture and plunder at the hands of
"warriors." As for warriors creating and enhancing civilization, a
decent case can be made that warriors have done at least as much to
destroy and weaken civilization. Bly is telling his followers to
emulate a model which he implies actually existed in earlier, better
days, before Vietnam and those despicable women who refused to sleep
with the warriors or to "throw golden apples" at them. In fact, the
history of war and warriors is filled with evidence of the problems
they cause. This is not to say that all warriors are evil or that
there is nothing worth fighting for. It's just that I think Bly's
case of war as something wonderful leaves much to be desired. For
example, he repeatedly talks about how women should have showered the
returning Vietnam vets with "golden apples" - I would agree that the
Vietnam vets deserved far more respect and better treatment than they
have gotten (from men and from government; women alone are not to
blame for the way Vietnam vets have been treated) - but Bly never
explores the fact that by the very nature of war, *not everyone comes
back.* This omission is too serious to be dismissed; the warriors
themselves often are made to suffer for being warriors, which Bly
never acknowledges (except to blame the suffering on the women who
fail to appreciate the warriors.)
5. Bly's book essentially says that "male = warrior". His equation
of war being associated with men ignores the fact that women have
always participated in war (see Antonia Fraser's work for accounts of
how medieval women defended castles against fierce sieges) and might
even have been fuller participants in war if men had permitted
(witness the current fierce resistance against allowing women in
combat, even those women who have been professionally trained and
proven their abilities.) Bly also subtly denigrates male leaders who
are not primarily associated with war-like tendencies (Susan Faludi
writes about how Bly has sneered at Gandhi as a "soupy philosopher"
and called Gandhi's work "weak ideas" - pretty hard to justify
historically). Men have made all sorts of contributions to
civilization which did not involve war, but Bly chooses to ignore this
part of history. Bly briefly admits that "war" can include mental and
social matters, but his primary love is for conflict in whatever form
as the historical and ideal definition of the masculine model. (In
fact, Bly's comments on the "warrior" and the "wild man" are so vague
and sometimes self-contradictory that at times I'm really not sure
what he ends up saying. In some places he talks about the horrors of
war, but then goes on to glorify fighting for a "True King." In some
places he suggests that his notion of warrior can encompass everything
including finishing a big project or dissertation, but if warrior is
used in such a vague sense, then his claim that male = warrior becomes
completely invalid as do many of his other arguments.)
6. Bly spends a lot of time talking about men's "wounds", both
psychological and physical. There is no doubt that men do suffer
wounds, but he fails to recognize that men themselves have constructed
the system which inflicts those wounds. Certainly men must bear some
responsibility for creating and maintaining the patriarchy. The
male-dominated "Indo-European" civilization has wounded not only men,
but also women. What about the multitude of wounds that men have
inflicted, not just on other men but on women - everything from rape,
and mutilation to murder? In fact, in order for a man to get a son, a
woman has to undergo nine months of discomfort and the sometimes
severe pains of giving birth - a biological and historical fact Bly
completely ignores.
7. In his eagerness to blame the women's movement of the 1960s for
men's "wounds", Bly casually skips over the fact that feminists and
the men's movement actually have a number of goals in common. For
example, in his wailing about how fathers and sons have become
strangers because the men need to work too hard, he might find it
useful to notice that the women's movement has been pushing to give
women a real position in the work force to relieve men of some of the
burden of supporting a family. Proposals for "family leave" bills
would permit men to take leave from work for the birth of a child to
allow some bonding; it is not the women's movement which has opposed
this, but the primarily male establishment. In many cases, women
would love to have men become closer to their children and for the
children to grow up knowing their fathers better, but Bly insists on
portraying women as these clinging vines who regularly commit "psychic
incest between mother and son" as he writes in "Iron John." (sheesh)
In portraying all men as workaholics who don't have time for their
sons, Bly ignores the fact that women have always worked hard too.
(Even in the 1950s, before feminism, 30% of married women held outside
jobs.) Furthermore, women have frequently had to cope with what's
called "The Second Shift", finishing their outside jobs only to spend
hours chauffeuring kids, cleaning the house, cooking and washing,
grocery shopping... The average woman's life is not the easy waltz
Bly implies.
8. Bly's work is a textbook case in blaming-the-victim. In "Iron
John", while talking about the need for men to adopt the spirit of the
wild man, he calls for developing a world in which "the Wild Man's
instincts have not been so suppressed as to produce the rage that
humiliates women." In other words, when men rage at women, it is the
women themselves who are entirely to blame for humiliating the men and
suppressing their wild instincts. Of course, most fights do have two
sides, but to blame women themselves for a man's attacks on them is
a wonderful example of how to duck responsibility. Far from producing
mature adults, Bly's work has the potential to allow men to escape any
real responsibility for their own actions.
9. Bly argues that the whole problem is that "the warrior inside
American men have become weak in recent years." Funny how I missed
that weakening inside the flood of tributes to Desert Storm, tv
appearances by Norman Schwartzkopf, Bush's campaigning on his war
record, the "Rambo" movies and all the other films in the
Schwartzenegger-Stallone genre, the weekend war games and hunting so
many men love on weekends.... The United States still has a very
warrior-like culture, in which I can see no weakening.
10. In yet another historical oversimplification, Bly claims that the
father-son bond was the primary casualty of the Industrial Revolution.
In fact, any decent history of the period will show that women and
female children were equally serious casualties of the Industrial
Revolution (see Angela John's book "By the Sweat of their Brow" about
the thousands of women who worked at the coal mines; many more
thousands of women spent incredibly long hours in terrible conditions
in "the dark satanic mills", while children were helplessly abused.
But this historical fact doesn't really interest Bly.)
Finally, Bly's book is full of talk about the Goddess and New Age
mysticism of exactly the sort that the women's movement has been
criticized for. Let me repeat, I am not against a men's movement in
principle; men's injuries and problems are not to be dismissed. But I
would hope for a men's movement which recognizes the women's movement
as a potentially sympathetic partner. Bly talks about wanting to
improve men's relationship with women, but he actually gives little
attention and few specific suggestions as to how that can be
accomplished in his mythopoetic scheme of things. Many feminists
simply would not feel comfortable working with a men's movement which
fundamentally bases its ideas on the claim that the feminists of the
1960s and beyond have critically weakened "all contemporary men," as
Bly claims. (Of course, this is not to say that the feminist movement
should not be criticized at all; critical assessment can be very
important. It's just that Bly's attacks on the whole thing are so
broad that they don't leave much room for dialogue.)
I am also uncomfortable with what I have heard about Bly himself.
Susan Faludi's book "Backlash" details one lecture at which Bly
viciously attacked an elderly woman who dared question him about a
seeming contradiction in his work, sticking his face in hers and
yelling "It's women like you who are turning men into yogurt-eaters."
When the woman asked how she could improve her relationship with her
husband, Bly shouted, "Why don't you stop making demands and leave him
alone." - Turns out the woman was concerned about getting support from
her husband because she was in the middle of fighting ovarian cancer,
which Bly sarcastically dismissed. To me, such a man does not deserve
to be made the guru of men's worship. Faludi also reports that when
one man complained "when we tell women our desires, they tell us we're
wrong," Bly responded, "So then you bust them in the mouth." (After
being challenged that this advocated violence against women, Bly
changed his line to "hit those women verbally.")
I would welcome a men's movement which recognized the hazards of using
a "warrior" and "wild man" model for men and which respected what the
women's movement is trying to accomplish for both men and women.
Unfortunately, it does not appear that Bly's mythopoetic claims are
the answer.
Amy Bix